Born in or near 1552 to a family of modest means, Edmund Spenser was possibly the son of John Spenser, a free journeyman clothmaker resident in East Smithfield in London, though this relationship is far from certain. Whatever his parentage, it is likely that the Spensers (or Spencers) originated in Lancashire, where they would have been connected with prominent local families such as the Nowells and Towneleys. Spenser seems to have had at least one sister, Sarah, and a number of brothers. As a boy, the future poet entered the Merchant Taylors` school, probably at its opening in 1561 under the celebrated humanist and pedagogical writer Richard Mulcaster; his place there maHe was the friend of men eminent in literature and at court, including Gabriel Harvey, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Robert Sidney, earl of Leicester. After serving as secretary to the Bishop of Rochester, Spenser was appointed in 1580 secretary to Lord Grey, lord deputy of Ireland. Afterward Spenser lived in Ireland, holding minor civil offices and receiving the lands and castle of Kilcolman, Co. Cork. In 1589, under Raleigh’s sponsorship, Spenser went to London, where he apparently sought court preferment and publication of the first three books of The Faerie Queene. After the Tyrone rebellion of 1598, in which Kilcolman Castle was burned, he returned to London, where he died in 1599. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.